Frequently Asked Questions

NOTE: This is not an official form of support. This is not an official service of Red Hat. These things may solve your worst nightmare, or they may eat all of the cheese in your house. I make no guarantees. YMMV.

About Fedora

What is this Fedora Core 4 thing?

First, read the official Fedora page a bit. Now, i'll give you a summary. You can think of Fedora Core 4 as something like "Red Hat Linux 13," except it differs from the old Red Hat Linux in the following ways:

It's a community-supported project. That means that you can be involved in creating Fedora Core, if you want.

A new version of Fedora Core comes out every six months.

When a new version comes out, the previous version becomes unsupported after another 6 - 8 months.

This means upgrading your OS every 6 - 8 months. The upgrades are usually very easy, much like Red Hat Linux 8 - Red Hat Linux 9. The easiness is not guaranteed.

If you don't want to upgrade every 6 - 8 months, there is something called the Fedora Legacy Project . They provide security patches for each version of Fedora for an additional 1 1/2 years after the Fedora Project stops their support.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is based on Fedora Core, so if you want to learn a little about RHEL for free, use Fedora Core.

What is the difference between Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is officially supported by Red Hat for 7 years. It's a better choice if you're running important machines in production, and you don't want to upgrade your OS all the time. It also has many nice features that are useful if you are running more than a few servers. Also, you can (sometimes) actually call Red Hat and get support for RHEL, which you will never be able to do for Fedora.

Fedora is distributed for free, and RHEL costs money.

Fedora is also much more cutting-edge than RHEL is, and Fedora has a larger community of users willing to help out and give free support (like this web page).

Where can I find a list of all the programs that come with Fedora Core 4 (a package list)?

When is the next version of Fedora coming out?

A new version of Fedora is released every 6 - 8 months. Specific dates are usually in the Release Schedule .

(Thanks to Tom Van Vleck for suggesting this question.)

What are the Fedora Extras?

The "Fedora Extras" are a set software packages supported by the Fedora Project, but they are not distributed with Fedora Core. They are available on Hat's Fedora download site . To install them, just see the question about installing software.

Using Fedora and Installing Software

Where can I get software for Fedora? (Updated 25 July 2005)

There are a few "repositories" (sites that hold software). The primary sites are the highly unofficial rpm.livna.org (for packages with licensing or USA patent problems) and the official Fedora Extras . They hold different software.

For an alternate choice, look at RPMForge . There are some packages in RPMForge that aren't in Extras or livna.org. You can see the list of available packages on the "Mega-Merge" page.

How do I install software for Fedora? (How to use yum or an RPM) (Updated 29 July 2005)

The easiest way to install software in Fedora is to use yum.
Configuring Yum

Here's how to configure your yum:
1. Open a Terminal.
2. Become root.
3. Run these commands to remove your yum.conf file and replace it with a fresh one (Updated 29 July 2005): cd /etcrm -f yum.confwget http://www.fedorafaq.org/samples/yum.conf
4. Now, install my yum configuration (Updated 25 July 2005), using this command:
rpm -Uvh http://www.fedorafaq.org/yum

NOTE: The yum configuration provided here is updated from time to time, for various reasons.
Using Yum

To use yum, open a terminal, become root, and then you can use the following commands:

To see a list of available software: yum list available

To install some software, you type: yum installpackagename

To update some software, you type: yum updatepackagename

If you leave out "packagename" yum will update all your software.

To see what updates are available, you can do: yum check-update

To search for a package, you can do:yum searchword'

For more info about yum, see the yum project page. (Thanks to Ron Kuris for this tip.)

To get yum through a proxy, see the FedoraForum thread about yum and proxies. (Thanks to Reinhard Herzfeld for that link.)
Installing Software Without Yum

To install an RPM file that you downloaded outside of yum, open up a terminal, and as root do:

rpm -Uvh filename.rpm

Is there anything like apt for Fedora?

Does up2date still work?

How do I install Java?

How can I install Flash in my web browser?

How can I see PDF files inside my web browser?

How can I watch movies in my web browser?

Can I use MSN Messenger/AIM/ICQ/Yahoo instant messaging in Fedora?

How do I install fonts? Can I use Windows (.ttf) fonts? (Updated 25 July 2005)

Where can I get drivers for my hardware for Fedora?

How do I play MP3s in Fedora?

How do I read my NTFS (Windows NT/2000/XP/2003) drive in Fedora? (Updated 25 July 2005)

How do I edit the menus in the panel? (Updated 25 July 2005)

How do I get Wine to work?

Problems and Their Solutions

The update servers hosted by Red Hat are slow! What can I do?

I get a NOKEY warning from RPM, or I get a gpg signature error when using Apt / Yum / up2date! (Updated 27 July 2005)

How do I enable 3D support for my ATI Radeon card in Fedora Core 4?

!!!How do I enable 3D support for my nVidia graphics card in Fedora Core 4?

There are now nVidia driver RPMs provided by livna.org that are designed especially for Fedora. If you're using yum, and you're using my yum configuration, you should be able to install the drivers easily:

1. Open a Terminal.
2. Become root.
3. Type:

yum install nvidia-glx kernel-module-nvidia-$(uname -r)

That installs the nVidia driver for your current kernel.

If you update your kernel, make sure that you install the newest nVidia driver before you start the new kernel. Here's a shortcut command that you can type in the terminal as root that makes installing the new driver easy: